Saturday, February 23, 2013

We are redoing our apartment and we are committed to using mostly recycled materials, whenever possible, but still end up with a beautiful space. One of the first things we did was put down recycled wood floors in the kitchen.

Here's the before. Super ugly grey ceramic tile:

and some more...

First we had to removing the kitchen:

Everyone's demos include a blow torch, right? That's not just us, right?

sink in the back yard, very classy:

Then it began:

In its last life this wood was the set of an amazing one woman show, "Stanley Ann", written by my talented partner, about Barack Obama’s mother Stanley Ann Dunham.

Friday, February 8, 2013

During
the battle with The Hoard and because my dear, sweet, and amazing partner has
more books than you can imagine, I gave him a Library for Christmas.(thanks in great part to my boss for a couple
of much appreciated home depot gift cards).

Here's that area of the room...

and...

and then...

I
would ike to point out that for every book you can see, there is another book
behind it.All these shelves are double
stacked because we do not have room for all the books on single shelves. Seriously the man has hundreds, maybe more than a thousand books, WTHeck!!

There is
a little room to add more shelves and I think we will do that very soon. But
it’s so great to have this cozy nook for reading.

Sometimes when you finish a project you end
up very angry with yourself, for not doing it years ago, when you first
had the idea, and this was one of those times.Must start using the learning
part of “live and learn”.

Saturday, February 2, 2013

Since
last we saw the recycled solarium, I have finished all that puttying, from part1, all the painting, sealing and trimming of all the windows and
doors/walls.The french doors/walls, from part 2, took 6 hours each to paint (three coats of paint) and scrape all
the glass clean.But I’m in love with
them and the teal too, so yummy.

Then we
built the sliding barn doors for both sides of the solarium, including ripping
down 2x4s to get the 1x4s we needed for the project.

And
because we made them really tall, we had to
build the barn door rolling track thingies ourselves too, or re-built the doors.Sooooooooo we were off to Industrial Metal
Supply with a million measurements and a dream. I wish I had taken a picture,
but in my defense it was pouring rain, we drove home, on LA freeways, with 2
ten foot steel track thingies sticking out the back window of our two seater
Honda Del Sol.There were red flags of
course, so it was completely safe…right…that makes it safe…right?

And did I
mention the miles of trim, made by ripping down 2x4s to 1x1s.Some days the power of our cheapness, I mean
environmentally friendly frugalness, is more work than I want to remember.But it’s hard to buy trim wood when you have
stacks for free, recycled, wood sitting in the yard.

Yard Side - Left Side(Looking in from the living room)

Patio Side - Right Side

(Looking in from the living room)

When first finished, not the final plan, but I had to sit
in it and

have a glass of wine that first night.Exhausted, but so happy.

And now
it’s the alfresco dining room I

envisioned all those months ago.WooHoo!!

This is
one of those projects I started out saying we would “bang out” in a weekend or
two.Hello 6 months later.But I think that’s a necessary mental game to
play.If I really thought, going in it,
it would take virtually every weekend of my life from July to January would I
have even started?I don’t know that I
would have.And was it worth it?YES absolutely YES.